Scheduling Five-Spot, WE 11/14/10 - Walking Dead, The Simpsons, Rubicon, Running Wilde, 3-Hour Comedy

Here's your Five-Spot of TV scheduling news for the week ending November 14, 2010:

The Walking Dead Renewed - Well, it made the Opinion and Ratings Five-Spots last week, so why not round it out with news of its renewal on this week's Scheduling one? I talked about how its ratings had redefined its network on the landscape last week. So stellar has been its performance that the net renewed the show the day after its second episode dropped only two tenths from the huge 2.7 demo start.

The Simpsons Returns for Season 23 - The looooong-running animated program that has been one of the tentpoles across nearly the entire history of the Fox network is gonna be on the air next season, ensuring it will pass the amazing 500 episode plateau. It's still a big-time ad rates draw, meaning there's no end in sight. Next stop for this historic program? The most scripted episodes in primetime record, currently held by Gunsmoke at 635.

Rubicon Cancelled - Yes, the massive ratings for The Walking Dead probably made AMC's decision on Rubicon easier. But the show was marginal at best even by pre-Dead AMC standards. A press release the day after Rubicon's premiere touted its ratings, roughly saying (to quote the last Arrested Development episode), "Two million! Two million!" Sadly, almost all of those two million were really old, and about the only ratings drama most subsequent weeks was whether it could exceed its typical, awful 0.2 demo.

Running Wilde Pulled For Sweeps - One of the most overrated memes among industry writers has gotta be "sweeps don't matter anymore." Is it really a coincidence the show goes off the air for the last two weeks of November sweeps, then returns? Or, as some predict, is this just temporary and the show won't even get back to the air at all? Raising Hope repeats fill in for Running Wilde at 9:30 for the next two Fox Tuesdays.

A Three-Hour Tour... A Three-Hour Tour? - The latest wacky NBC scheduling rumor that everyone seems to be on board with (thankfully, they didn't do the last one) is a potential three-hour comedy block on Thursday. I'm not quite as opposed to this idea, though I do have my worries about a show starting at 10:30 and programming three hours of the same thing. As a backseat programmer, I can't deny I'd be interested in seeing what happens. It hasn't been done with original eps in many years.

More Five-Spots can be found in the Index.